Where there's a lack of vision, the people perish....

There are so many things that I could blog about tonight: so much is going on in our world. Alas, time constraints compel me to focus on just one thing--a story that many of the popular blogs aren't running.

It's such an important story that I wanted to highlight it here, to make up for the lack of attention it's receiving, and to use it to respond to several remarks that a commenter has made on another blog.

Over at The African American Clarion Call blog I'm having a fun discussion with Constructive Feedback, and the blog author, Greg L.

Constructive Feedback describes the black electorate-Obama dialectics with the following observation in response to a statement proffered by the blog author:

"Black People SUPPORTING A "RIGHT WING DEMOCRAT"? PLEASE!!!!!
It is more accurate to say BLACK PEOPLE - knowing that they are going to get some measure of PROGRESSIVE policy AND seeking to retain their VICARIOUS LIVING through OBAMA'S EXPERIENCES - are SILENT over Obama's actions as COMMANDER IN CHIEF OF THE AMERICAN EMPIRE."

To underscore his position again, Feedback offered this followup observation:

"What we have today are Black people who are looking at Obama as KING Jr but failing to realize that KING turned AGAINST the man who seat Obama now sits when King could no longer accept his actions as Commander In Chief. King prioritized global JUSTICE over 'The Great Society'"

Undeterred by the utter brashness of his position, one shared by other black conservatives, I responded thusly:

I guess you're using an exclusionary clause, exempting yourself from the society of "Black People." But that's to be expected given your ideological propensities. Nevertheless, I would expect someone other than a black person to write the aforementioned statement. It reveals a total ignorance of black people, and their rationale for voting for now President Obama.

Would you say that you're living "vicariously" through Obama, and are waiting for some "progressive policy" from him? No, you wouldn't, but you don't hesitate to confer this dubious honor upon liberal blacks.

Other than being the best president this nation's ever seen--where most have been white--blacks want nothing from Obama: no handouts, no reparations (although Fox News insist we do), and no special treatment.

I didn't make this statement just to provide a counter to the one Constructive made, it's a position I've held from day one. Here's another:

Blacks did not, are not, pinning their economic, social, or political hopes on Obama. Were that the case, we would have deserted him months ago.

Yet, that's what you'd like to believe, because it fits the narrative you've contrived, and it buttresses your ideological predisposition. Blacks saw in Obama, not an opportunity to advance so much, but as confirmation that blacks can reach for the highest office in the land and achieve it, despite the obstacles, the hurdles, and the impediments that are often strewn in our path by the majority society.

That assurance along will drive the vision of blacks now being born, and those who, even now, are aspiring to do great things. You can't see that because you're wearing ideological blinders, and can only see what you've placed in front of you.

I dare to have more faith in our people than you; to believe in their eventual success; to know that a new energy has been unleashed, and a new vision of their potential brought before them.

Where there's a lack of vision, the people perish.

To support my position, let me offer the following:

MEMPHIS (CNN) – A hundred and fifty-five Warriors from Booker T. Washington received a high school diploma and a handshake from President Obama in Memphis today.

"Just a couple of years ago, this was a school where only about half the students made it to graduation. For a long time, just a handful headed to college each year," the President pointed out in his address to the students.

The schools graduation rate is one reason the President came to Memphis on this cool spring day. Booker T. Washington High School is credited with a jump in graduation rate from 55% to 82 % in just four years through the use of gender based classrooms and increasing teacher effectiveness by moving teachers that seem to get more than a years growth out of their students to the core classes of English and mathematics.

"Because you created this culture of caring and learning, today we are standing in a very different Booker T. Washington High School. Today, this is a place where more than four out of five students are earning a diploma – a place where 70 percent of the graduates will continue their education."

The President has set a goal of having the largest percentage of college graduates in the world by the year 2020. Booker T. Washington is an inner city school, is a low-income neighborhood with high incidents of teenage pregnancy and violence.

I believe that a part of their success as students results from this new vision of their potential, but I must also credit the hard work, and persistence of their principle and teachers.

Please watch the following video from CNN. As usual, you'll have to endure a short commercial before viewing it, but it's time well spent. When President Obama makes his entrance, one of the girls in the graduating class breaks down in tears.

Tell me that these young people will forget this special visit and honor, and won't go forward to do great things with their lives!

"Obama Got Osama!"

The headline for the St. Petersburg Times newspaper read simply and briefly,

DEAD

over a picture of Osama bin Laden. It was the most pithy statement of Osama's death I've seen to date, and perhaps the most eloquent for its brevity.

Although I'm happy to see this almost decade-long chapter in American history finally closed, and the families of the victims of 9-11 find a measure of closure that Osama's death brought, we're all painfully and keenly aware that the fight continues against terrorism, and Islamic terrorism in particular.

Human nature being what it is never amazes me, but, in all honesty, it does surprise me from time to time. That was the case following the revelation that Osama had been killed in a U.S. led operation, by an elite military group (probably Navy SEALs taking the lead) to either capture or kill Osama.

The crowd that quickly gathered outside the White House, Ground Zero in Manhattan, and Times Square in New York as well as other locations throughout the United States to celebrate Osama's death, struck me as another of those moments of human interaction that I find puzzling, but not out of the realm of possible human reactions.

I found the jubilation, and the jubilant mood emanating from the throngs surreal and foreign to my sensibilities. Although I should have expected it, it nevertheless caught me off guard, and I wasn't immediately prepared to digest it. I'm not judging their actions. I'm merely sharing my response to their actions.

For one, learning of Osama's death didn't plunge me into a celebratory mood. I experienced a moment of disbelief as I read the announcement on my television screen, "Special Alert, Osama bin Laden is dead." My thoughts like a pendulum swung between the surreal and the real. Is this true? Are they mistaken? Did they get this wrong? How much should I believe?

My sister summed it up nicely when I notified her of Osama's death. "This isn't April first!"

Questions surrounding this successful military operation are already being formed:

How much did the Pakistani government and military know, and were they instrumental in assisting our forces with the capture of the compound where Osama lived, and in his death?

How much should we support a supposed ally that surely knew that Osama was living this close to Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan, and a mile from a Pakistani military training academy?

How far will the success of this mission, the completion of a campaign pledge to either capture or kill Osama bin Laden, go toward silencing Obama's critics who say that he's known for "leading from behind"? This operation was not only gutsy, for all the things that could have gone wrong, and the political fallout that could have ensued, but for the further tarnishing of our already sullied image abroad.

At some point, depending on the aftermath of Osama's death, we can expect a movie or a made-for-television recounting of what took place internally and externally to kill "the most wanted man in the world."

It's hard to say, now, if the death of Osama bin Laden will result in a political coup for Obama in 2012. Yet, this can't do much to hurt his image, and his approval rating this close to that pivotal election for him and democrats who may be running for office at that time.

I hope it will put to rest the oft-stated lie that only Republicans can keep America safe from terrorists. Republicans have already gotten more mileage from this lie than a bald tire with frayed steel threads exposed.

This has been a surprising several days all around, first the release of Obama's birth certificate, and now the death of Osama bin Laden.

Trump Trump'eting

Having received only three comments for my last blog entry with two of them my own, I seriously considered not blogging about this or any other subject.

By now you know that I capitulated, and this blog entry is proof of that capitulation. Many bloggers are blogging tonight about President Obama releasing for public viewing a copy of his long-form birth certificate.

The short form (certification of life birth) should have been sufficient, but this is America after all, home of the frightened and the bigoted.

What we have seen for the past two and a half years from the Birthers, the bottom feeding members of the Tea(2)Party is what

My country, 'tis of me,
Sour land of calumny,
Of thee I sing;
Land where my black fathers died,
Land of the pilgrims' loss of pride,
From every mountainside
Let calumny ring!

Orly Taitz, the Birthters' favorite daughter, and chief exponent, was fast tracked for U.S. citizenship after she immigrated to the United States in May 1987. Citizenship was bestowed upon her in 1992, five years after arriving here from Israel. I guess it helps if you're a dentist and a lawyer.

What Taitz learned early on, it seems, is how willing some Americans are to keep blacks in their place, and how she could use this American penchant to believe the worst of blacks to build a reputation on exposing the newly-elected black president as an interloper, and a fraud--one who placed the crown of citizenship upon his brow without the requisite document to prove that he was part of the illustrative many who could. Had Obama not been black, this opportunity for self-aggrandizement would have had to take another turn, delaying Taitz' rise to fame and fortune.

But Taitz knew her adopted country well. She knew that her birtherism claim that the president wasn't born here, would be met with general acceptance, given how willing some Americans are to delegitimize a black man who had the temerity to rise above his station.

Hence the Boyification of President Obama began in earnest. Seeing what the birther claims did for Taitz and others, Donald Trump aspired to be the poster boy for the group, calling on President Obama to deliver, or forever be discredited as a cheat, and a fraud. The certification of live birth wasn't sufficient for Donald and others who wanted to see the president meekly surrender to the demands of his white critics and detractors.

No sooner was the birther claim laid to rest, following the release of the president's birth certificate, that Taitz and Trump (What's with people whose last names begin with "T"!), planted other conspiratorial mines in hopes of doing what they failed to do with the birther claims.

They have the president by the toe, and they won't rest until he hollers. And when he hollers, they still won't let him go, but find another toe to "catch" and persecute, even if they have to attach a bogus toe to the ten he already has.

Now, this whole nation would be well served if Taitz' citizenship was annulled, and she was shipped back to Israel, or to Russia.

Fear: Far and nEAR

On the sidebar some bloggers reveal that they're reading a book. Other bloggers have gone a step further: They not only reveal their reading du jour, but offer a review.

For now, I'm going to break with a part of that tradition: I'm going to reveal the book I'm reading, but postpone a review for a later time. Instead, I'd like to excise a portion of it, and get your response.

Written by Manuel G. Gonzalez and Richard Delgado, the book explores how Bush-era Republicans used fear to win seats in congress and hold fast to the presidency. The book is titled, appropriately, The Politics of Fear: How Republicans Use Money, Race, and the Media to Win.

Copyrighted in 2006 by Paradigm Publishers the book is written with the insight, and uncommon examination of one published only yesterday.

What I'd like to bring to the fore is a statement made on the very last page of the book (the Conclusion chapter). The statement introduces a quote. Keep in mind that the quote predates the book's copyright date, and could very well have been published months, perhaps years, before.

"Every four years, Republicans present their party platform very openly and clearly before the electorate. Moreover, the GOP agenda, as we have seen, is one that has been articulated throughout the years by party strategists representing the various factions that collectively make up the New Right, and these operatives have been unusually forthright in some of their public declarations about their common vision: 'an America in which the rich will be taxed at the same rates as the poor [Be sure to watch the accompanying video], where capital is freed from government constraints [regulations], where government services are turned over to the free market [Watch the several videos highlighting the book, "The Shock Doctrine." Learn that Crises may be real, imagined or manufactured.], where the minimum wage is repealed [Some of the comments posted there are as inane as the proposal to replace adults with children and pay them less (less than minimum wage, that is)], unions are made irrelevant [I could have selected from thousands of articles with a similar focus.], and law-abiding citizens can pack handguns in every state and town.'57" [p. 132]

To show you just how far Republicans have come in realizing their vision for America, I have provided supportive articles that might be accessed within the previous statement by clicking on one, or all, of the highlighted links. The articles prove one thing: The persistence of the Republican Party, and its drive to establish One-Party Rule in this country.



57.Scherer, "Soul of the New Machine," 44.

Not Free Unless the Courts Agree!

A recent Supreme Court ruling affirming free speech rights in a controversial case, one pitting freedom of religion against freedom of speech, comes as no surprise, but what was surprising was the one judicial hold out, the lone dissenter, associate justice Samuel Alito.

You remember Justice Alito, the lone dissenter again (ostensibly, that is), during one of Obama's presidential speeches before congress, shaking his head and possibly mouthing the words, "not true," to a statement Obama made expressing disapproval of a recent Supreme Court ruling.

Thanks to that controversial free-speech ruling, we can all rest easy tonight snug in the assurance that our free speech rights will continue unabated and untarnished.

Corporations can continue, without fear of reprisal, to spend massive amounts of money to influence the outcome of elections and the viability of certain legislation; Sara Palin, the run-away Alaskan governor, can continue to insist that President Obama "pals around with terrorists;"[1] Mike Huckabee, an ordained minister, can continue to say falsely (forgetting: "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.") that president Obama grew up in Kenya and was heavily influenced by his father and grandfather who opposed British imperialism;[2] and Michele Bachmann, the flower of American patriotism, can continue to cast the president as un-American, and his administration as "gangster-"like.[3]

Of course they do it, because there's a segment of the population that thrives on this mendacious fare, and upon whom much of it is heavily lavished: it sells millions of books, if you're Huckabee, Palin, and George Bush;[4] sets you up as a Tea Party Caucus leader of a rather "anemic" group, if you're Michelle Bachmann[5]; and puts millions of dollars into political war chests, if you're Scott Walker, or a growing number of other politicos, Scott Brown, for example, vying to be the political darlings of the Koch brothers.[6]

Rights are rights, but oftentimes they conflict. For example, when does our right to express our religious beliefs, vouchsafed by the same document that guarantees our freedom to speak, takes precedence, if, and when, those rights clash, as in this case? To my knowledge there's no hierarchy of rights. As such, they all stand firmly on an equal footing, one independent of the other.

If we take reckless liberties with the right to speak (in this case in writing or print, or on a sign), we may be accused of libel, brought into court and sued. This is a limit to free speech that all courts recognize and support. But since the decedent in this case, once dead, has no reputation to protect, and, therefore, cannot suffer an infliction where damages may be assessed, the case is moot.

If we take reckless liberties, as did the Westboro Pastor Fred Phelps and other church members, that encroach upon a person's right to bury a loved one according to the precepts of his religion, then that expression is protected, all the way to the Supreme Court:

"In a case pitting free-speech versus privacy rights, the nation's highest court held that the picketing at a private funeral and even hurtful protest messages were protected by the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment.

"The decision by an 8-1 vote was the latest in a long line of Supreme Court rulings that free-speech rights protected even outrageous or offensive conduct, including the burning of the American flag.

"The ruling was a defeat for Albert Snyder, the father of a Marine killed in Iraq in 2006. He sued after the family's funeral service at a Roman Catholic Church in Westminster, Maryland, drew unwanted protests by members of the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas."[7]

Although one of the pillars of our democracy has been strengthened by this ruling, not all are satisfied with the outcome, and have been rather vocal with their opposition. Under the title, Schieffer: First Amendment Rights Gone Too Far?, Bob Schieffer gives expression to my view as well:

"(CBS News) I've spent most of my life defending the First Amendment. But when the Supreme Court ruled last week that it gave a church group the right to picket a dead soldier's funeral with signs that said, "God Hates You" and "Thank God for Dead Soldiers," I was appalled.

"The group believes our soldiers are dying because God is punishing America for tolerating gay people. That anyone would have the audacity to claim knowledge of God's reasoning is ridiculous, but here's what I don't understand.

"The courts have long held that free speech can be limited in rare circumstances. We can't yell fire in a crowded theater if there is no fire, because it would endanger public safety - people might be trampled in the chaos.

"The First Amendment has done just fine with that limit.

"But if that is so, why isn't public safety endangered when a mob hurls brutal abuse at an innocent citizen who could be scarred with severe and lasting emotional damage?

"We must obey the law, because we are a nation of laws. But whatever the laws, what these military families have endured is not right, and every community must now move quickly to establish buffer zones (which are legal) to keep these protesters as far as possible from military funerals.

"When there are those among us so selfish and cruel they are willing to use one of our most cherished freedoms to intrude on the grief of parents who have lost a child just to promote their cause, we must do everything legally possible to deter them.

"The court has ruled, but the effort to protect these families must go on."[8]


[1]"Palin said today, according to a transcript distributed by the campaign. 'These are the same guys who think patriotism is paying higher taxes. This is not a man who sees America as you and I do — as the greatest force for good in the world.

"'This is someone who sees America as imperfect enough to pal around with terrorists who targeted their own country,' Palin concluded, in the hardest shot of the statement."

[2]"Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee says President Barack Obama's childhood in Kenya shaped his world view -- despite the fact that Obama did not visit Kenya until he was in his 20s.

"The potential Republican presidential candidate told New York radio station WOR that Obama was raised in Kenya with a Kenyan father and grandfather.

"Actually, Obama was born in Hawaii in 1961 to a mother from Kansas and a father from Kenya whom he would barely know. He spent his youth in Hawaii and Indonesia and did not visit his father's homeland until 1987, well after his father's death."

[3] "MR. GREGORY: You, you've referred to the Obama administration as a gangster government. You've said that this president has anti-American views. Do you believe that still?

"REP. BACHMANN: I believe that the actions of this government have, have been emblematic of ones that have not been based on true American values. Just consider Obamacare. Over 900 waivers have been given out to unions and protected special interests that are linked to the president. That's not right."

[4] "'America by Heart,' Palin's new memoir, has logged disappointing receipts since it officially went on sale late last month, publishing sources say. Although the book is second on the New York Times bestseller list this week (behind former president George W. Bush's memoir, "Decision Points") , its publisher, HarperCollins, hasn't ordered a second printing - a sign that sales haven't been overly brisk.

"By contrast, Palin's first book, "Going Rogue," became the second-fastest-selling political book in history upon its release last year, according to Nielsen BookScan, which tracks industry sales. It went into a second printing three days after its release and went on to sell 2.2 million copies in hardcover, according to the publisher."

[5] "That is pretty anemic! In fact, it means that Tea Party Caucus ranks have actually diminished under the "leadership" of Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs Michele Bachmann (R-MN-06), which is really remarkable given the constant fluffing the Teabagger contingent gets from the national press. Seriously, who would have guessed that there would be fewer members of the caucus in this Congress versus last?"

[6] "At the public dedication of MIT’s David H. Koch Integrative Cancer Institute last Friday, Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) effusively thanked conservative billionaire David Koch for supporting his election in 2010 and made a plea for help in his re-election campaign next year."
[Watch exclusive video here.]

[7]

[8]

Dread Scott

I write a lot about the American dream, and how we expend our time and energy in pursuit of it. The "dream," itself, isn't good or bad, it's just a dream. What makes it either good or bad, is what we give up to attain it. If we give up integrity in the pursuit, it's bad. If we give up what's good and decent in our being, it's very bad.

Sometimes, the price that's paid to realize the dream becomes bigger and more expensive than the dream itself.

In walks Scott Walker, governor of Wisconsin. Assuming the office on January 3, 2011 Walker has already made a splash with his party, and has grabbed a large portion of the national mega-media spotlight. Palin did it by becoming John McCain's running mate. Walker is doing it by becoming the first Republican governor to challenge his state's time-honored reverence for employee unions. Other Republican governors are expected to follow his lead.

A recipient of Koch brothers money during his run for the governorship, Scott Walker came to the position bought, if not bossed. Barack Obama is often described as a Manchurian candidate. We could say, with a measure of accuracy, that most elected officials, those who have taken vast sums of money from a cadre of donors knowing full well that pay-back is expected, or, once in office, taken large sums of money from lobbyists with similar goals, are effectively Manchurian candidates. The difference: these public officials knowingly do the wishes of their benefactors; a Manchurian candidate, unknowingly.

I put Governor Scott Walker in the "knowing" category.

Thank you, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, for waking a sleeping giant.
Thank you for the awesomely uplifted spirits of Wisconsinites from Superior to Kenosha and Eagle River to Platteville, who trekked to the state capital to defy your union-busting grab.

Thank you for the caravans from North Carolina and New Jersey and Utah who came to a small city in the Snowbelt to join the cause. They know this is not Wisconsin's fight alone. They know that in fifty states, we all are targets of a nasty national conspiracy to destroy unions and the middle-class society unions have built.
Thank you for those whose signs proclaim, "Former Republican."

Gov. Walker, when you concocted a fake budget crisis to have an excuse to rush a union-busting bill through the Legislature, you showed yourself to be as deaf as the Hosni Mubarak so many signs have compared you to.

I've never felt so rejuvenated as when marching with thousands on cold evenings in Wauwatosa and Menomonee Falls shouting, "This is what democracy looks like." It evoked my memories of long-ago marches for civil rights at home and peace in Vietnam. [1]

This much I know: Were it not for unions, the American dream which undergirds American exceptionalism, a term we hear thrown about now with the ease of a baseball, would not be something in which this country takes pride. Unions gave us 40-hour work weeks, weekends, pensions, and other concessions from Big Business, hard-won worker benefits too innumerable to recount.

I don't happen to believe, as some Republicans do, that unions are bad--bad for businesses, and bad for America. Without unions, compensation for a days' work would have been at the pleasure and munificence of employers. The rise of the middle class would have looked more like a molehill, than a rolling hill, and American exceptionalism and the American dream wouldn't have entered our national, political lexicon.

George Carlin, now deceased, says it best in the following video clip. "A high school dropout, Carlin enlisted in the army, [where he] got his high school equivalency....[O]n June 22, 2008, Carlin died of heart failure," most likely the result of a broken heart, given the deep disappointment he carried for his beloved country.

Although a comedian, Carlin had a Solomon's wisdom grasp of the American condition and an amazing insight into what makes our country tick, and what is needed to seize the American dream.



The audience laughed, clapped wildly, and cheered. It would have been better had they resolved to be M.A.D. as hell, but they weren't. Under the heading of TrUSt?, I warned that government shouldn't receive our unquestioning trust.

On another blog, I posted this observation on the current political scene unfolding before us:

Unfortunately, politics is a game. It’s a game that’s played for the players and not for the spectators, who can find their fortunes reversed and sacrificed so that the players can assure a win.

The difference between Repubs and Dems is that the Dems don’t play as ruthlessly as the opposing team: they usually follow the rules of the game, don’t foul as often, and believe that the spectators should have some stake in the outcome of the game. But make no mistake about it, Dems are as eager to play for the sake of the team, as Repubs, but Repubs are out to play for themselves and themselves only, and the spectators be damned, if they get in their way.

[1]

The "Father of Black History"

This is Black History Month. It was once known as Negro History Week. Rather than highlight Martin Luther King Jr, and other civil rights leaders this year, I thought I'd take a closer look at the founder of this national observance, Carter G. Woodson.

I have Woodson to thank for all those stern black faces on posters that once a year, during Negro History Week, looked down upon me disapprovingly, as I walked the halls of my high school.

How would I ever live up to the fierce demands that those inquiring eyes imposed upon me, a mere lad of the south?

Perhaps this was why Woodson founded Negro History Week: to sear into the black consciousness a challenge that asked: "How will you use your life to continue the work that these civil-rights stalwarts and pioneers began and you inherited?"

For his part, Woodson is rarely mentioned in the context of black history, nor is he given proper credit for his contribution to Black History Month. This year I wanted to make up for this oversight. You'd think that the person responsible for Black History Month would, at the very least, receive some "love", too, during this time of the year.

In the spirit of doing my part to restore Woodson to his rightful place in black history, and as the "Father of Black History," and the founder of what is now Black History Month, let me offer this background information--a brief summary of his life as a gifted scholar, and educator, and as an unlikely activist:

Carter Godwin Woodson founded The Journal of Negro History in 1916 and began Negro History Week (later Black History Month) in 1926, earning him the nickname "The Father of Black History." The son of enslaved African Americans, Carter Woodson earned undergraduate degrees at Kentucky's Berea College in 1903 and at the University of Chicago in 1907. He also studied at the Sorbonne in Paris, and after he earned a graduate degree at Chicago (1908), he went on the earn his doctorate in History from Harvard University in 1912.

Woodson taught in public schools in Washington, D.C. and served as a dean at both Howard University and the West Virginia Collegiate Institute. But his greatest impact was as the leader of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, an organization he founded in Chicago in 1915. (The name was changed to the Association for the Study of African American Life and History -- ASALH -- in 1972.) Woodson and his colleagues were energetic advocates for the study of black history as its own field, and they spread the word through their Journal, as well as through articles in Marcus Garvey's Negro World, public lectures and an ambitious community outreach program that welcomed students and non-academics. He also used the study of history as a spark for social activism, as evidenced in his most famous book, The Mis-Education of the Negro (1933).

Carter Woodson began Negro History Week in 1926, designating a week in February, because that month held birthdays for Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington. That went on to become Negro History Month and then Black History Month, designated as February each year by presidential proclamation. Carter G. Woodson's other books include A Century of Negro Migration (1918), A History of the Negro Church and The Negro in Our History (1922).

Carter G. Woodson was the second African American to earn a Ph.D. at Harvard -- the first was W.E.B. DuBois... Woodson served as an education administrator in the Philippines from 1904 to 1907... He launched the publication The Negro Bulletin in 1937 as a way to reach younger audiences... President Gerald Ford began the tradition of declaring February to be Black History Month in 1976.